National Bias and Home Advantage in International Dancesport Judging

Subjective sports judging is vulnerable to bias, with national bias being the most widespread and well-studied form; however, dancesport has not been empirically studied for this despite the phenomenon being well documented in related sports. This paper investigates national bias among international dancesport adjudicators during the 2024–2026 period, using a novel dataset of 992 judge-level observations from eight international tournaments and a panel OLS model with tournament fixed effects and clustered standard errors. The main findings reveal evidence of in-group favoritism (β = −0.407, p < 0.001) and an unexpected negative home- advantage effect (β = +0.183, p < 0.01). Both findings were directionally robust across three robustness checks. This study is, to my knowledge, the first documented evidence of national bias in dancesport, and its findings are relevant for judging-panel design and transparency in the sport going forward.